Video: Egypt's squash player Ali Farag wins Optasia Championship, says politics in sports 'allowed all of a sudden'

CAIRO – 13 March 2021: Egypt’s squash player Ali Farag won the Optasia Championship title at the Wimbledon Club in London despite a warm-up injury ahead of the match on Saturday, using his victory speech to highlight the discrepancies in sports and politics.

“One more thing that I know is going to get me in trouble, but you know we've all seen the what's going on in the world at the moment with Ukraine and nobody is happy about what's going,” Farag said.

“Nobody should ever accept any killings in the world, any oppression. But we've never been allowed to speak about politics in sports, but all of a sudden now it's allowed. So, that we're allowed, I hope that people also look at the oppression everywhere in the world,” he added.

“I mean, the Palestinians have been going through that for the past 74 years and, well, I guess because it doesn't fit the narrative of the of the media of the West, we couldn't talk about it, but now that we can talk about the Ukraine, we can talk about Palestinians. So please keep that in mind,” Farag continued.

Farag, World’s No. 2, triumphed 4-11, 11-8, 11-8, 13-11 against World No. 6 Diego Elias at Optasia. His speech was not included in the highlights of the match on the Youtube channel of PSA.